I'm talking in this instance about personal finance decisions. That is, how one person deals with the world in terms of the way we manage our personal budget, and the decisions we make in terms of what to spend money on, what to pay, what to contest and how we go through life.
Probably the ideas scale upwards (to apply to institutions and groups beyond just individuals) but I want to make the case directly relating to an individual.
So obviously I'm talking about me, but I'd like to try to step back and instead refer to a more "generic" anyperson.
In the course of living in a capitalist society, we are confronted with daily choices about what things to purchase with our limited available funds. My central point is that we often give attention to things that is directly related to how much they cost. That is to say, we obsess much more over "big ticket" items (like cars and houses) then we would over smaller purchases (a pack of gum for instance).
As a specific example, here in the US I think many folks might see a copper-colored coin on the street/floor below us and perhaps not even waste the effort to pick it up (because it doesn't seem to be worth the gain (1 cent)). I'm a cheapskate myself, so if the coin is silver, I almost always do stop to pick it up, but I suspect that some folks wouldn't bother with that effort either.
My contention is that this causes us to "undervalue value" when it's below a certain threshold. This seems to me almost a direct consequence of "economies of scale". It's natural to not want to waste the effort to argue over pennies but I'm beginning to believe that this pattern of thought can creep beyond the economic boundaries from which it sprung forth. By getting concerned about large purchases/expenditures and ignoring the small ones, we learn that value itself has an "aggregate" quality; i.e. unless the price/cost of something is beyond a certain threshhold (the exact pricepoint of this threshhold will vary depending on many things including the wealth/income of the person in question, as well as their personal view of the world and perhaps many other factors).
As another aside, I think this dovetails with one of the oldest pieces of "wisdom", the fact that many rich folks claim that they acquired wealth by being cheap (and watching every penny). By going *against* the norms (and refusing to consider small prices/costs "beneath their concern"), it's within the power of many individuals to become "rich misers".
But the really important thing here is that for those of us who *don't* sway from normal behavior, we are corrupting our world view, not just our economics. Because ethics don't scale the same way. There is no such thing as a "small" ethical dilemma, but the pattern of performing triage on economic decisions (to determine whether a small dollar amount is worth our attention) teaches us to carry this sort of thinking into other matters. And I think that's a real problem.
The ramifications go right back to the advice many of us use to get as kids: "Eat everything that's on your plate because there are starving children in xxxxx"
As a parent I know that this is a tough thing to enforce, but being diligent about reducing waste on any scale is something that will become more important in the future (after all, we humans already number in the billions, effectively overrunning the entire planet). By choosing to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for waste and corruption (in any context) we can do a better job of being good citizens of the planet.
As far as the bigger problem (about how to share this information with others in a way that doesn't bring scoffs of derision) and convince folks to be concerned about the little as well as the big, I don't really have any great suggestions or ideas yet. But the whole thing only occurred to me this morning in the shower, so maybe something will occur to me.
Send an email to my answer@ account here (leave out the lake.) if you are interested in this topic and wish to discuss it more.